From Doom to RAGE: 20 years of id development

Ars talks to the minds behind id's upcoming RAGE to learn how development has …

Both Tim Willits and Matt Hooper got their start in game design as fans, creating maps for id Software games like Doom and Quake. Now, as the studio celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, both are working on the studio's upcoming post-apocalyptic shooter Rage. It's a game that not only represents id's first new IP in quite some time, but is a culmination of two decades of FPS design.

Willits, now id's creative director, began modding maps for the first two Doom games back in college. He would actually daydream of working at id during the commute to class. Hooper, now design director, had a similar experience, though he worked on Quake maps in lieu of engineering homework. Eventually, both were noticed and hired by the powers that be at id.

"One of the philosophies of id, and specifically of John Carmack, is getting out to the community in the form of tools, SDK, the ability to mod the engine—it started such a huge following, not only with our titles, but so many other titles as well," Willits told Ars. "And it helped probably hundreds of people land jobs in the industry.

"So both Hooper and myself and a number of people here on the RAGE dev team got their start modding id Software games. So it's really exciting for us to be working here."

Both have since risen from modders to prominent leaders within the studio. The process is different in a lot of ways, and comes with more stress—"I have a lot less hair," joked Willits—there are also quite a few similarities. When Hooper used to sneak away from his textbooks to get in some Quake modding time, it wasn't all that different from now, when he has to focus on the management of the company while at the same squeezing in time to help create a new game.

"There's still the times we get to sneak away and be creative and be part of that process," Hooper told Ars. "That's probably the most rewarding."

Rage

Of course, that's not all that's changed. Since the release of Doom 3, the studio has grown significantly, with around 60 core developers working on Rage, around three times as many as worked on Doom 3. Even fewer worked on previous games. On the technical side, the team is also dealing with multiplatform development for the first time, as Rage will be available on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in addition to the PC. Prior games were developed on the PC and ported to consoles, not developed simultaneously.

id is known for pushing the technical boundaries of modern PCs, but with id Tech 5—the technology that powers Rage—the focus was a little different. The team has attempted to make the game playable for more people but still maintain the technical prowess that id is known for.

"Now we have some reasonable specs, but we still wanted to achieve a high visual fidelity," explained Hooper, "so that was kind of a struggle to marry those two things together; make the best game and land inside of the requirements."

Over the course of its existence, id has become known primarily for its work on three different franchises: Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein. Rage represents the chance to do something new. This let the team play around with ideas that might not fit within games where fans already have expectations, but that might work in a new universe. Early on, though, what that universe was wasn't exactly clear.

"Early on we had an idea of doing this sort of muscle cars in the desert scene," Hooper told Ars. "It wasn't so specific. So we really had to feel our way through because that was such a new thing."

Eventually the post-apocalyptic world was fleshed out and expanded. During the course of development, games like Fallout 3 and Borderlands were released, which drew immediate comparisons. "I get a giggle out of [the comparisons] because of course we had no idea [those games were in development]," said Hooper.

Instead, the Mad Max-style was chosen as a "grand excuse to twist the world in a way that's different." It's a near-future world full of mutants and different factions, which allowed the team at id to expand the gameplay in a number of ways. In addition to its core shooter gameplay, RAGE also has RPG-style elements. You can customize your character with new weapons and gear and there are towns where you can talk to people and learn more about the world.

The expansive wasteland also led to another new concept for an id game: driving. Although, as Hooper explained, this feature still isn't far removed from id's shooter roots.

"I don't think we thought it veered too much from the shooter fundamentals because you still have a weapon on the vehicle, you buy new armor for it, you press a button, you fire a weapon, and you have some rewarding feedback on the other side," he told Ars. "And that's kind of the fundamentals of a shooter. It's all about hitting a button and having something cool happen.

"I've described it as the horse in Zelda. You ride your horse from one place to another and the world seems more believable than just a standard corridor shooter where you go from point A to point B and then there's a door and you load the next level."

Though the team is still focused on launching RAGE at the moment—that will include creating post-release DLC based on player feedback—the ultimate hope is that, like Doom and Quake before it, Rage will eventually become a franchise. id has "about a billion" different ideas that either didn't make it into the original or could be used in a potential sequel. Before even that happens, though, the studio has another focus: Doom 4. The much-anticipated game is already in the works—while it may take some influences from Rage, expect to see something different as well.

"We do want the game to be outstanding in its own way," Hooper told Ars. "We don't want Doom to be a re-skinned RAGE, or RAGE to be a re-skinned Doom, or any of that."

I wish I could get excited about this game, but unfortunately they have a review embargo. I don't see the point of spending 60$ on a game that doesn't even have first person multiplayer and is loaded with pre-order bonuses and sewer DLCs

id is known for pushing the technical boundaries of modern PCs, but with id Tech 5—the technology that powers Rage—the focus was a little different. The team has attempted to make the game playable for more people but still maintain the technical prowess that id is known for.

I'm sure this will generate a lot of complaints. Personally, I'm not emotionally scared that id is targetting consoles as a first-class platform alongside the PC as long as the PC version still gets relevant control, UI, and graphical enhancements.

It would be have been interesting to ask id what happened to the Mac version seeing the first public demo of RAGE was on a Mac.

Quite frankly Id has never let me down, I don't expect they do so this time around. What I found most interesting was the mention of Doom 4. Here's to the masters of the FPS and hoping they pull another ace out of their sleeve.

Knowing nothing about the game, I saw a commercial for Rage this weekend, and I thought it was Borderlands 2 until the end when the name of the game appeared.

The graphical styles aren't just similar, there are even similar types of mobs and player classes. Either it's an incredible coincidence, or there was some creative borrowing going back and forth between the two games.

I love me some id. From the days I would deal with terminating TSRs on the Radio Shack tandy so I could have enough memory to load Doom, and then subsequently get kicked out, moving on to DCK and WinTex and then ending up at BSP for Quake as I enventually had to give it up for time. My earliest days of gaming were dominated by id games and even if they pull a 3DRealms eventually I'll still look back fondly.

Hopefully RAGE is good, because I need another reason to not doing anything productive...

I'm looking forward to the game. I don't care what it "could have been" or what they "consolized" as long as I get a fun to play game that I can kick back and blow stuff up with. I want fun and as long as that's delivered the rest is just posterity.

Quite frankly Id has never let me down, I don't expect they do so this time around. What I found most interesting was the mention of Doom 4. Here's to the masters of the FPS and hoping they pull another ace out of their sleeve.

I'm looking forward to the game. I don't care what it "could have been" or what they "consolized" as long as I get a fun to play game that I can kick back and blow stuff up with. I want fun and as long as that's delivered the rest is just posterity.

Amen. From what I have seen the visual fidelity is nothing short of breathtaking anyway, so I'm not exactly worried that things have been scaled down. I'm pretty sure when asked about IDT 5 Carmack indicated that it was meant to scale without impacting the ability of higher end systems to crank out the beautiful. It looks like they got that part right.

Quite frankly Id has never let me down, I don't expect they do so this time around. What I found most interesting was the mention of Doom 4. Here's to the masters of the FPS and hoping they pull another ace out of their sleeve.

Since the release of Doom 3, the studio has grown significantly, with around 60 core developers working on Rage, around three times as many as worked on Doom 3. Even fewer worked on previous games.

I'm kind of curious how their finances have worked out over this time.

They've been largely out of the game since Doom 3, handing off their major IPs to third party developers with questionable results. That's something that could be overcome with a good engine licensing business, but they don't seem to have had much luck in that arena either.

One would have imagined they'd have been hemorrhaging cash during this time, let alone being able to expand their workforce so much.

I've been rather disappointed with id for the past decade or so, so hopefully they can return to their former glory. I'm still a skeptic though, I'm going to wait until Rage is released and has been vetted by the gaming media and the community before I'm willing to get out the wallet.

Quite frankly Id has never let me down, I don't expect they do so this time around. What I found most interesting was the mention of Doom 4. Here's to the masters of the FPS and hoping they pull another ace out of their sleeve.

I thought Doom 3 was mediocre at best as well. At this point Id (like Epic) has been living on past glories, there are far better developers out there, and do we really need another game set in a post apocalyptic world? I`ve already got Borderlands and Fallout3/New Vegas in my Steam Library which is enough for that genre.

It is true that id hasn't put a driving element into any of their games, but the concept is hardly new for a FPS game. HL2 had it (and eventually you got a gun installed). For me, it worked pretty good. The car in HL2 was all sorts of buggy, but HL2:E2 the car was fixed. (Reverse turning was an issue. If you were in a right hand forward turn, then applied reverse and a left hand turn, you would continue in a right hand turn in reverse.)

Id's small teams and low overhead meant the studio made pretty hefty profits off of their games, even Doom 3. That's why they've been able to go 6 years between releases without utterly collapsing. Plus they had licensing income.

Apparently they're not going to have the licensing income for the new engine. It's going to be kept in-house.

Quite frankly Id has never let me down, I don't expect they do so this time around. What I found most interesting was the mention of Doom 4. Here's to the masters of the FPS and hoping they pull another ace out of their sleeve.

I think you're looking for something different from games than what orbital667 is looking for. Doom 3 was not the first iD game to be virtually devoid of plot and formulaic in design. What iD game has ever stood out for its plot or surprising map progression? Commander Keen? What iD fans (like me) appreciate is the technical innovations. Wolfenstein 3D faked 3D with clever use of pre-rendered images of walls at various positions and distances. Doom drove the 2.5D revolution and pushed the standard VGA chipset. Quake was about full 3D and doing compelling lighting in 256 "colors" by choosing a limited (drab) palette and pre-computing visibility and lighting information. Check Wikipedia for the rest of the list.

I think iD may have handed the tech-pushing mantle off to Crytek. The Rage engine (iD Tech 5) brings less dramatic technological improvements. Rage may be the first iD game which actually does bring good story and environment design, but I'm not holding my breath.

We'll have some thoughts on Rage going live at 12:01 EST tonight. Buckle up.

Wasn't that 23 minutes prior to posting your message?

12:01pm is not at night. 12:01am is.

The article wrote:

"One of the philosophies of id, and specifically of John Carmack, is getting out to the community in the form of tools, SDK, the ability to mod the engine—it started such a huge following, not only with our titles, but so many other titles as well,"

If not at id, then at Valve. As a reminder, Valve hired the guys who did Team Fortress for Quake to port it to Half-Life (as Team Fortress Classic) with the intent on making a sequel.

However, the sequel took another 8 years to actually be released (in 2007) as part of the Orange Box.

@rdeforest - preach on brother. That's exactly how I see id too, and I date from the Doom via a null-modem-cable days myself.

I've still preordered RAGE because I think it looks like an interesting game on it's own merits, and because despite the various Fallouts and Borderlands, I can't gets me enough of that there post-apocalyptic vibe.

The last id game I bought was Doom 3. I liked it but it wasn't the time-waster for me that Quake 3 was. I must have put 100 hours into multiplayer, mod, and trying to get better and better against bots in one year in elementary school alone for Quake 3.

The last id-owned-but-someone-else-made game I got is Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. I found it very meh. My opinion dropped even harder when I played Battlefield 2 and saw that ET:QW looked like a retexturing of that.

If I get a bonus from work and bills are paid I may get Rage just for the hell of it, but for right now it's not even on my radar.

Quite frankly Id has never let me down, I don't expect they do so this time around. What I found most interesting was the mention of Doom 4. Here's to the masters of the FPS and hoping they pull another ace out of their sleeve.

Play Doom 2, then play Doom 3: it will be self explanitory. It was exactly as I expected, with monster closets and everything.

Exactly, who walks into Doom 3 expecting a super deep plot? I loved it because of the environment (I felt they really pulled off creepy and oppressive very well) and the plasma gun reloading noise. That is THE COOLEST sound effect in all of video game history imo. I remember I had just gotten my Radeon 9700 Pro and surround sound speakers and I saddled up for Doom 3 and loved every minute of it.

I find all video games stories are corny. These include HL1 and HL2. There are cool situations, but come on they are worse than action movies. I want fun gameplay with crisp movement and balanced weapons. That said id has certainly lacked in the innovation department of late.

I've cancelled my pre-order of BF3 based on that horrific BETA for consoles and placed the funds on this. That said, I will be waiting on the reviews from various respected sites before I take the plunge. I was badly burned by Bethesda's published Hunted:The Demon's Forge which RCVD this similar review embargo BS.

On my watch-list aside from Bethesda is now EA, which has partially ruined ME, and BF, and showed no support post-release for Crysis 2, which to this very day needs immediate patching and attention.

DICE shows a lot of balls by giving a BETA for BF, but they demonstrate pure lunacy by releasing it in that state so close to release date. Publishers need to wise up, because this review embargo nonsense is hurting public perception, and perception is everything. Actually $$$ is, but Perception vs. $$$ is a directly proportional relationship.

Nothing shows lack of confidence more than having reviews only available on Day-1.

How could Hooper not know Fallout3 was being developed by Bethesda when both Bethesda and id are owned by the same company?

Because Zenimax only bought id a couple of years ago. Rage was in development years before that. In fact, it was shown in 2007 before Borderlands and before we knew much about Fallout 3. It just took too long to release.

Id's small teams and low overhead meant the studio made pretty hefty profits off of their games, even Doom 3. That's why they've been able to go 6 years between releases without utterly collapsing. Plus they had licensing income.

Apparently they're not going to have the licensing income for the new engine. It's going to be kept in-house.

You say "even Doom 3" but it is id's most successful game, sales-wise.

To be fair, "post apocalyptic wasteland" isn't exactly the kind of setting that only a genius could think up for a shooter. If they were releasing a shooter in an underwater libertarian utopia that has fallen apart and is overrun with zombies, then I would raise an eyebrow, but post apocalyptic wasteland is well worn ground in the shooter genre.

Exactly, who walks into Doom 3 expecting a super deep plot? I loved it because of the environment (I felt they really pulled off creepy and oppressive very well) and the plasma gun reloading noise. That is THE COOLEST sound effect in all of video game history imo. I remember I had just gotten my Radeon 9700 Pro and surround sound speakers and I saddled up for Doom 3 and loved every minute of it.

I recently played Doom 3 and rather enjoyed it as well; with my only major complaint being the monster closets and lighting issues that could be fixed using mods. Sometimes I would rather have a rather simplistic plot than some of the overweening plots you sometimes get.